Editorial

For the man born in 1976, terrible connotations were always associated with the word “Syrians.”

“The Syrians,” my generation used to plainly say when referring to the policies of the Syrian government.
A term often came to many carrying disgust, revulsion and horror.

“The Syrians” want this, “The Syrians” don’t want that. “The Syrians” prefer this, and “The Syrians” dislike that. “The Syrians” will stay forever. “The Syrians” are inevitably returning to occupy Lebanon. “The Syrians...” “The Syrians...” “The Syrians...” And so forth!

For the man born in 1976, “The Syrians” is the nickname of a doomed fate. A self-clarifying term, with absolute implications at all times. Little is said of the Syrian regime, for example. Since Hafez Al Assad’s ascendency to Syria’s presidency through a military coup in 1970, the regime is “The Syrians,” and “The Syrians” are the regime. No separation, of any kind, existed between the two.

The Syrians are not reminiscent of the Lebanese, Syria’s flanks in my country used to say, as a matter of self-humiliation and self-flagellation, when one thinks that anti-Assad Syrians might exist. For them this was impossible. “The Syrians” are a special species that stayed immune to Lebanese “diseases” of rich plurality. Those are “The Syrians,” the flanks tell you, without feeling any need for additional explanation.

It is significant, in this vein, that Syria is “Assad's Syria.” And the Syrians, consequently, are “Assad’s Syrians.”

A phrase that used to read on as many walls as possible in the Bekaa, Beirut, Mount Lebanon and the North, or decorate, in stones, the improvised gardens in front of shabby Syrian military camps here and there in Lebanon, summarizes the impossible dichotomy between “The Syrians” and the policies and actions of the Syrian government and the Baath Party.

“Assad is our Leader forever,” said the phrase.

The bottom line is that "The Syrians," the phrase suggests, is a state with no inside vigor. An entire people of whom we, as Lebanese, do not know, except for what reaches us through the distorting recoveries of exotic Syrian neighborhoods in TV dramas and series.

Yet, unlike the case with Egyptian or Turkish dramas, the Syrian ones present an imaginary inside that is entirely disconnected from the current realms of fashion, professions, economy and politics in modern Syria.

In fact, daring acknowledgement of an internal Syria, rather than the one projected by the regime, is lethal. The assassination of two prominent Lebanese journalists, Samir Kassir and Gebran Tueni, speaks volumes of that. Both Tueni as the courageous editor in chief of An-Nahar newspaper and Kassir as an agile liberal writer with good connections to the Syrian opposition helped the Syrian opposition’s voice be heard.

It is common among admirers of Tueni and Kassir to blame their assassinations on their particular “involvement in the internal matters of Syria.”

An-Nahar hosted since 2000 the most advanced internal Syrian debate, shedding light on the fructuous inside of Syria, and breaking the inertia of Syria’s image, which the Assad regime was keen to maintain since 1970.

Since that day, the term “The Syrians” took a different path so that it no longer meant the thing it meant for decades. It gradually lost its ability to capture Syria and its people as an exclusive regional political entity.

Rather, “The Syrians” refers now to people whose pain we feel, whose fate we fear for, and, most importantly, whose hope for a better country we share.

Once again, we can love Syria and the Syrians, and we, as liberals, can say to the despot and his flanks: You have your Syria and we have ours. Ours is a Syria whose news we follow with the largest extent of love, worry and hope.
Ours is a new Syria who reconciles us with her as much as with ourselves.
Ours is a Syria that suggests to us a brighter present and future.

To this Syria it is all just to say: Thank you, Syria.